What’s the difference?

The main difference is cost. Non-UK networks charge ‘interconnect fees’ to deliver your message (as they are separate companies). This means that each message to a non-UK mobile number will cost double the amount of credits shown in the credit counter on your account.

Even though it is ‘double credits’, because of our incredibly low prices per credit, this means Text Marketer are still one of the cheapest international SMS gateways available.

Formatting international mobile numbers

If sending to non-UK mobile numbers (in an international-enabled Text Marketer account), you must ensure that you enter the number in full international GSM format, including the country code.

In most countries mobile numbers start with a zero and the easiest way to remember international formatting is “replace the zero with the country code” (you don’t need any + sign before the number).

Here are a few examples:

UK – 07657345987 becomes 447657345987
DENMARK – 024215712 becomes 4524215712
NEW ZELAND – 0211238815 becomes 64211238815
AUSTRALIA – 0211238815 becomes 61211238815

Does it affect sending to UK numbers?

No. Your account will work out which numbers are UK and which aren’t and charge you accordingly.

To enable your account for international mobile numbers, please contact us with the company name of your Text Marketer account to request the change.

Businesses across the country are gaining a competitive advantage using SMS. Text Marketer are committed to bringing them all the lowest prices.

As part of our Best Buy Guarantee we guarantee to bring customers the best Bulk SMS Prices always. Today, after substantial negotiations with the networks, we have managed to make a significant reduction in our text message marketing costs.

Our biggest reduction is to our ‘headline’ starting price, down to 3.7p from 4.82p for bulk SMS purchases of 1-9,999. This is almost a 25% reduction in that price which will positively affect the majority of small business text marketers.

All our other price bands have been lowered too so everybody will benefit.

Nobody beats us ..
We have conducted a comprehensive review of the entire marketplace and are pleased to announce that Text Marketer’s Bulk SMS prices are the lowest in the UK – to prove it, we’ve published all our competitor’s SMS prices on our site. Our Best Buy Guarantee commitment to our customers means we will continue to strive to bring them the best deal.

Just in time for Christmas ..
Christmas is an exceptionally busy marketing time for companies but we have managed to get this price reduction in in time for companies to make maximum use of cheaper bulk text marketing – boosting ROI’s across a broad range of SMS Marketing activities.

If you want to take advantage of the lowest cost Bulk SMS in the UK then get a free text marketing account today with 10 free credits.

If you’re an existing customer then no need to do anything. These new low cost SMS rates have already been applied to your account and you’ll benefit from them on your next purchase.

As a company, we are committed to bringing all our customers the lowest possible prices on Bulk SMS.

Time for those Christmas Marketing hats to come on

The Text Marketer creative team have been at it again, coming up with fabulous new ways for our customers to use SMS Marketing which makes a real difference to their business.

There’s an old adage I always think of in our business, “you never know until you try”. How true this is. So many companies still don’t ‘get’ the use of SMS in their business, yet, as soon as they’re out of the office they’re on the phone texting ninety to the dozen! What could be a more obvious advert for texting!? This is how people want to be communicated with nowadays.

Anyway, to those who have realised that using SMS is 5-10 times more responsive, 90% cheaper and 100% greener (probably the ones reading this, let’s face it!) – let’s get on with how to make this Christmas a stunning one for your business.

The GOLDEN Rule

True in all direct marketing but because of the mobile phone’s ‘personal’ nature, even more so with Mobile Marketing …. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes before you send them a message, ask yourself (amongst other things);

• What’s their lifestyle like – student, working mum, shift worker, retiree?
• When will they be most likely to read the message you’re sending them?
• What will be the most important things on their mind right now?
• How can we give that particular customer exactly what they want!?

See database segmentation for SMS Marketing for more

Once you’ve done this you’re (according to Direct Marketing Association research) you’re about 70% there in terms of a winning SMS campaign.

Top 5 winning Bulk SMS Campaigns this Christmas

These won’t ‘exactly’ fit every business but with a little tweaking the concepts are the same for most:

Giving your customers a 'virtual present' by SMS really boosts positive word of mouth, attracting new customers.

1. Inform customers about opening hours, ordering deadlines, etc’ for the Christmas period
Whilst this seems mundane, it is proven to have an excellent response rate. It shows you care about your customer and also communicates a sense of urgency about ‘getting your order in’ before the big rush.

2. Contact customers who ordered from you this time last year
An often overlooked strategy. If they bought from you last year, there’s good chance they’re still in the same market this year.

3. Drive traffic to your website
Some companies are paying £1 or (sometimes much) more per click on Google AdWords when a text message costs just a few pence! If you’ve got something special on your website for the festive season, tell people about it by text.

4. Get a much better sales response to your E-mail campaigns
Much in the same way companies used to advertise on TV, “New Christmas brochure out in our shop tomorrow”, text customers to tell them, for example, “Latest Christmas offers arriving by E-Mail tomorrow – please order early to avoid disappointment”. This will boost open rates and orders significantly. See get better e-mail open rates for more.

5. It’s Christmas – send them a present!
This will depend on your business but try to think of a small gift you can give your customers – maybe a Christmas ringtone (has viral marketing benefits too!), a virtual advent calendar, a free Christmas mobile game, a money off voucher, etc. etc. A small gift can go a long way in a customer’s eyes and will also help positive word of mouth advertising.

If you need any help, support or advice, don’t be afraid to give us a call. If you don’t already have one get a free Bulk SMS account and give it a go.

Merry Christmas and an SMS-powered prosperous New Year!

Subscribers to the sms service receive regular text alerts to remind them about all the events aimed at young residents in the area.
“Find out what’s on during the school holidays for children and young people aged 0 – 19. With hundreds of FREE and low-cost events, activities and venues we hope you agree that Westminster is a great place to grow up.”

Text Marketer chosen as sms service provider.

Text Marketer has been selected as the bulk sms company to provide the technology to enable the sending of the sms campaigns; their  Marketing Director, Richard Hawley said:
“We have been actively working with many more local councils in recent months and we are delighted to be adding Westminster to our selection of clients.”

SMS alerts for events are far more effective than any other communication channel. 98% of text messages that are sent are read, compared to open rates for e-mail of typically less than 20%. (source – Mobile Marketing Association)

Sending sms campaigns using Text Marketer’s web-based system is very quick and easy. Users do not need any specific technical skills and accounts are free to set up.

Your Certificate Screen

You can access your certificate showing how much woodland you have created under “Reports” menu, option “Plant-a-Forest Cert”. This will pop up a new screen with your certificate which will constantly update itself with every purchase you make.

Sample of a Plant-a-Forest certificate detailing the contribution your company has made.

Click "Reports" menu to see certificate option, where enabled.

I’ve just sent a campaign and my certificate has not updated? This is because the certificate is updated when you purchase credits, relative to the amount of your purchase.

What is the Plant-a-Forest option for my SMS Marketing account?

It is a scheme whereby we donate money for every message you buy to create native woodlands. It is an opt-in scheme so please do conatct us if you would like to opt-in.

If you are a new customer please create a free bulk sms account and let us know if you would like to opt-in.

A bold claim. But, this is not one of those over-complicated articles on efficiency, structure or cost effectiveness. This comes down to cold, hard pounds, shillings and pence ….. and has a strong, environmentally positive message too.

The Financial Services industry sends billions of pieces of mail every year in the UK. Some of the time this is unavoidable. For example, certain contracts, policy documents and alike have to be posted by law. The vast majority though are information mailings, reminders, offers or simply follow ups. These do not all need to be sent by post. Most of these types of communication can easily be handled by sending a text message.

Insurance Renewal Reminder – A typical example

Let’s take this as a typical example in the insurance industry. All Company A needs to do is remind a customer that they need to renew their insurance and to please call them. Why spend 50p or more on a letter, stationery, time, postage costs etc. (not to mention valuable wood resources for the paper, fuel costs for the delivery, etc. etc.) when a simple 3.8p text message would suffice. Also, with the text message, you can track it has been delivered and it gets straight to the customer’s phone who can use that exact same device to call!

Why not E-mail? 3 Main reasons as a starter … 

Mostly when a company sends a communication to a customer, they are trying to get a response. E-mails, broadly speaking, just don’t get an acceptable level of response any more.

• Excessive spam has crippled trust in e-mail deliverability and companies are looking for a good response rate to their communications.
• Excessive ‘phishing’ or ‘scam’ e-mails from bogus financial services (and other) companies often means those who do receive emails will not click on them.
• On top of this, those people that do receive documentation by E-mail tend to print it and therefore you end up with the same environmental paper cost.

Forgetting the environmental benefits for a moment, how much money can you save using SMS Text Messaging in your business?

Hardly any business could stop using mail altogether but by using SMS where possible you can boost your response rates, save huge amounts of money and be a more environmentally conscious company.

To put this into context with some numbers, here is the typical cost of sending a 1 page mailing. Also, it shows the cost per response at a typical rate of 2.5%:

And the costs using SMS showing large savings, coupled with a typical response rate of 10%, bringing the cost per response down by some £19.62!:

Using a conservative cost figure of 50p per item of post (most business federations estimate this more toward the 70p range as an average including time, stationery, stamp, etc.) the savings using SMS are incredible. When you factor in that you are likely to get a 4-10 times higher response rate and that it promotes a positive environmental message for your company, it is an extremely compelling argument.

How ‘Green’ is it using SMS instead of mailing?

It is actually quite staggering how many trees it takes to make our beloved paper. The exact number depends on quality of the paper in question, to what extent it is recycled and so on. But, a generally accepted figure from the trusted source Conservatree is that around 8,000 pieces of average office paper takes 1 x 40 feet tall tree of about 6-8 inches in diameter – an ‘average’ tree.

The figures below show the ‘tree cost’ of a 1, 5 & 10 page letter including an A5 envelope (even before the additional environmental cost of transporting the items):

How many trees could your business save?

Notes to calculations above:
1. Based on approximate calculation of 8000 average weight paper sheets of A4 costing 1 tree. Higher quality paper would cost more trees and vice versa. Source: Conservatree
2. Includes an envelope in each mailing, equivalent to 1 x A4 sheet.
3. Does not include additional environmental cost of transporting the mail items.

Conclusion

The information raises the inevitable question- “why isn’t my business using SMS”?

If your answer to the following questions is yes, then maybe it’s time to have a talk with us;

• Would you like to save a lot of money on your mailing/postage costs?
• Would you like to get a better response to your communications?
• Would you like be able to boost your environmental credentials?
• Would you like to communicate with your customers in a way they want to be communicated with?

Text Marketer was one of the first agencies in the UK to bring bulk text messaging to businesses small and large. We have built our reputation on quality of service, using only the best UK routing for timely delivery of text messages at the lowest price in the UK. Our client list runs into the thousands, but, notable organisations that have enjoyed the stability and reliability of our service over the last decade include Her Majesty’s Governement, Thames Valley Police, Ministry of Defence, Virgin, Dominos Pizza, VW, Mercedes, NSPCC and BMW.

I don’t want to send long messages, does it affect me?
No. Apart from some slight changes to the character counter in your account.  you can still send messages up to 160 characters for 1 credit, as normal.

I do want to do this, what do I need to know? What’s different?
If you want to use the long message feature (aka Concatenated Bulk Text Messaging), there are 2 main differences to be aware of:

1. Concatenated messages cost 1 credit per 153 characters. The reason this is reduced from the normal 160 characters is to allow for the ‘invisible glue’ code in each part of the message which is inserted so that the phone knows to join these parts together once it hits the phone (see illustration below).
2. For the first 24 hours or so in your delivery reports, you will receive a report per part of the concatenated message. For example, if you sent a full 612 character (4 part) message, your delivery report would show 4 reports per number. For your convenience, within around 24 hours, our system then ‘cleans’ your delivery reports to show just 1 outcome per mobile number.

What’s this ‘invisible glue’? Why do I only get 153 characters per message credit in a long message?

Previously you could only send 1 x 160 character message to any phone. As the medium exploded, people wanted the ability to send longer text messages and the networks responded by creating the ‘concatenated text message’. Due to the limitations of text messaging, a long message of say 612 characters is still sent as 4 individual messages. But, when our system tells the networks ‘these are 4 parts of 1 message’ they insert some code into each part which in turn tells the phone to display this as 1 message, instead of 4. This code takes 7 characters of ‘space’ in each part of the long message.

Example of the 'invisible glue' needed to ensure a long message is displayed as 1 message on the phone

I use the SMS Gateway. Can I send ‘long text messages’?
No problem at all. We have updated the SMS Gateway Integration document to reflect this change.

We hope this enhancement will help to increase the effectiveness of your SMS Marketing. If you are reading this and don’t yet have an account, why not get a free Bulk SMS account and have a free trial.

For your information here are a list of the supported characters;

?

If you are using our campain bulk sms system then you will be alerted if you use any unsupported characters when you submit the sms campaign.

For SMS Gateway customers, you will receive a fail response for any messages submitted with unsupported characters.

This is quite a major technical update to the system but as so many customers responded positively, our technical team has been busy making all the necessary changes for both web based Text Marketer accounts and the SMS Gateway.

We estimate this significant enhancement should be available in all customer systems within a week but we thought we would release a sneak preview of what you can expect to see very soon.

How will this affect you? FAQ’s

• Do I have to use this feature? Although your system will be able to send concatenated messages, you can still simply send messages up to and including 160 characters for 1 credit.
• I use the SMS Gateway, can I use text message concatenation? Absolutely, this feature is already enabled on the SMS Gateway. Contact us for more details.
• How will it affect my delivery reports? If you don’t send concatenated message then there’s no change. If you do, for the first 24 hours or so after the campaign, you will see multiple delivery receipts for each ‘section’ of the message per recipient. E.g. if you send a 640 character message, then you will receive 4 delivery receipts for each number sent to. From the network’s point of view you have sent 4 messages to that number (although the recipient receives it as one message). After 24 hours or so your reports will automatically be ‘cleaned’ so that you just have 1 response per number sent to, as usual.

Do I need to do anything?

No. As soon as this enhancement is available it will automatically appear in your send screens.

Sales increased over 19% by simply sending a follow up thank you text message to customers.

Further to our article, Top 5 Tips for increasing sales using Bulk SMS, one of our customers RoughTrax (a mail order supplier of Toyota Hilux parts) decided to follow our Number 1 Tip …. follow-up text messages to customers after a sale.

We asked Barry Hemmings, Director at RoughTrax how it worked for him and these are the figures he gave us;

• We send out around 1,000 orders a week and followed up each an every sale 2 days after delivery with a text.
• At that volume, using Text Marketer’s Bulk SMS system, it cost £49+VAT per week
• About 10% of the customers we sent a text to called back up and made additional orders.
• RESULT: 19.23% increase in the total sales value of those customers we sent the text to – Fantastic!

There are other advantages to doing this too – positive word of mouth increases when you follow up a sale with a thank you message – resulting in more sales from brand new customers.

RoughTrax sent the following message, “Thank you for your recent order. If you need anything in addition within 7 days we will give you a 5% discount. Regards, RoughTrax. 0117 986 9065.”.

Why not test the same concept on a group of your customers for a few weeks and see if you can achieve the same fabulous results? You can get a free Bulk SMS account here and our minimum purchase is only £10+VAT (giving you 204 text message credits) – why not try it on 204 customers for example!? If you had a 19% sales value increase from 204 customers, would it be worth more than a tenner?

The critical difference when using an SMS Gateway is that you send each message uniquely, not as a batch. This gives you control or merge capabilities. A classic example would be sending bank balances by text message. Each one would have to be unique and this is where SMS Gateways come in.

You need a small amount of technical knowledge to integrate with our SMS Gateway, but we have helped as much as possible by compiling articles on how to integrate an SMS Gateway which should help you along.

One of the most popular web languages to use is PHP. To assist PHP programers wanting to integrate their applications into our SMS Gateway we have compiled the following;

• SMS Gateway Specification – Inlcuding PHP Code examples
• A simple send class example in PHP 5 for sending text messages through our gateway
• Receiving SMS via a Gateway. A PHP 5 Class code example for implementing listeners.
• Delivery reporting on our SMS Gateway. Collecting reports.
• Using an SMS Gateway with Short Codes

As well as giving unrivalled levels of support, we are also proud that we have the cheapest SMS Gateway product in the UK. This means the lowest per message price!
The quality of our gateway second to none with direct connections to Vodafone. You can get a free SMS Gateway trial here and test the quality with no commitments.

Text messages get straight to your customer, wherever they are.

Having been in the business for over a decade now, we have seen just about every type of Bulk SMS Marketing strategy, with varying levels of success. The one common denominator between all the strategies employed is that companies who embrace this relatively new (for businesses anyway) communication channel is that they are almost always successful.

Often the first thought when people hear, “business text messaging” is, OH NO, you’re not going to be one of those spammers are you!?
True, in the past Bulk SMS for businesses usually consisted of getting a big list of mobile numbers and sending them all a spam SMS message! Nowadays though, the law and the savvy UK customer has caught up with these rogue companies and they are virtually non-existent.

In fact, here are some recent “Business Texting Fast Facts”

• 65% of people send business text messages from their mobile phone on a daily basis
• 50% of people receive business text messages from a member of their team/ department/ office
• 47% of people receive business text messages from a colleague
• 36% receive business text messages from a customer or client
• 71% of people use business texts for setting ‘reminders of meetings and appointments’
• 18% of people used business texts for ‘notifying people about new meetings and appointments’
• 14% of people use business text for ‘chasing up suppliers or new orders’
• A third of respondents (36%) said that they receive text messages from a customer or client
• 11% of people receive text messages from suppliers.

So, what are the most effective ways to gain increased sales using Bulk SMS?

In reverse order of success rating;

Number 5
Start a text club. Allow people to text in to a keyword to receive special offers from you by text message.

Number 4
Keep a customer informed during the order process. Text them when you have received the order, when payment has been taken & when it has been despatched with a delivery time estimate. This has been proven to dramatically increase repeat orders and positive word of mouth.

Number 3
Text enable your adevrtising. Allow people to respond by texting you. On average around half of respondents will choose to do so if you include a text response on your advertising and often those people wouldn’t have responded so you increase response rates.

Number 2
Text lapsed customers. Try to get a list of customers from your database who haven’t bought for X months and text them out an offer to encourage them back to you. So long as they had a good experience last time, this is one of the fastest ways to gain new sales.

And, in at Number 1 …..
Follow up your sales. Customers like nothing more than to be assured they have made the right choice buying from you. Text them X days after the sale thanking them for their business and offering a number to call if they need any help or anything further. We have seen this increase recall rates, increase repeat purchase and hugely increase positive word of mouth amongst peer groups – essentially free advertising!

Take a look at a few SMS Marketing Case Studies for other ideas but if you do only the 5 above, you’ll notice immediate results and sales increases.

By segmenting your database and talking to people in a more relevant way you can often see the response rates to your SMS campaigns increase by a factor of three or four times.

8 ideas of “what” to segment your list by;

1. Propsects that have become clients.
   Once a list member has bought from you you should move them to a ‘client’ list. They are now more valuable and should be spoken to in a different manner to prospects.
2. Product lines purchased.
   If you have distinct product lines then it makes sense to speak to customers about the product lines in which they have expressed an interest, or bought from in other words.
3. Average revenue earned.
   Split customers into ‘average spend’ categories as this will help you to talk to them in a price range they have demonstrated they are happy with, increasing your chance of selling to them again.
4. Major clients.
   VIP clients should be in a special category. Give them better attention, exclusive offers or information.
5. Purchase lifecycle.
   Is there a pattern to repeat purchase or an obvious trigger? For example, if you sold service items for cars then it would make sense that the purchase would probably be every year just prior to their next service/MOT and whatever offers you have throughout the rest of the year and probably not of interest to those clients until their next service/MOT date. Not only does this make the likely response rate to campaigns but it saves you money and removes the risk of annoying the customer that they ‘just don’t need’ service items half way through the year.
6. Demographics.
   Demographics might include age, race, gender, education levels, occupation, location of residence, marital status, number of children, income or other socio-economic factors, etc.
7. Sales create sales.
   Create a sequence of communication to existing customers. Your goal being to praise their wise decision to purchase from you in the first place and then to ‘be there’ for them when they’re ready for their next purchase decision.
8. Geography.
   You product or service might operate very differently in different areas of the country or you may have different promotions in different sales area. You might simply be able to point customers to different stores by knowing their location.

Having said that, there is some common ground and also some general advice which will help you get the best response from you SMS campaigns, so here goes;

1. What do you want to achieve?

Think about what you actually want to achieve from your Bulk SMS campaign. Is it a text back response, a phone call, an email, a visit to your website, etc. This will help you in writing your message and selecting your target audience. For example if you were texting older people you might want to have a phone number to call rather than a text back response as in all probability the majority of that target market will prefer using the telephone to talk to someone.

2. Target, target and target again

There’s a rule of thumb in direct mail that has proven itself bullet proof over the decades. The list (target market) you use is seven times more important to the success of a campaign than any other element of the campaign. This is of course true when it comes to SMS Marketing.

If we sent an offer of a buy 1 lipstick get 1 free to our entire list, you’d reasonably expect a close to 0% response rate from the men on the list! A glaringly obvious example of course but it serves to demonstrate the point!

Think about the people on your list. Are there any obvious ‘segments’ you can talk to more specifically? Gender is obvious, but, other things to consider are, age, geography, time since last purchase, product categories (what have they bought in the past), spend levels (how much have they spent with you), transactions (how many times have they transacted with you or indeed have they) and so on.

‘Segments’ will of course be specific to each company but normally in a list of any size there will be some segmentation that can be done so you can target your message and your offer more appropriately to give the best chance of success.

3. The Text Message

Now that you’ve decided on what to achieve and what segments you have, writing the message should be easy enough. Just keep it short, to the point and make sure you get you call to action across clearly, i.e. what you want them to do.

Don’t forget you might want to write several versions of the message which appeal to your various segments.

• A good example of a succinct message is, “Great news! x% of all XYZ products for this weekend only. Only available online @ www.xyz.com. Use XYZ code at the checkout to claim. Hurry, ends 9am Monday!”

4. Test everything!

The biggest joy about SMS Marketing is you have the ability to test everything. Don’t be afraid to, it’s how the companies at the top find out what works best. For example, does a web promotion work best or is it best to invite people to call you or even respond by text? What time of day or night is best to send out your message? Or even a weekend? What offer works best, BOGOF or discounting.

Include redemption codes in your different messages (e.g. “use code XYZ when you call to claim your discount”) and track responses to work out which combination works best for you.

5. Remember, it’s an SMS Marketing ‘Campaign‘

Many companies like to try one SMS broadcast and if it’s successful, they’ll subsequently do another.

In common with other direct marketing channels numerous studies have shown that frequently prospects will not respond until they have seen a text a number of times. This is often simply because they do not know the advertiser, and continued exposure brings reassurance. It may also happen that your prospect is not in the market the first time your text arrives but some weeks later they are ready.

John Caples, one of the world’s great copywriters put the optimum figure at 7 times; David Ogilvy, the founder of Ogilvy and Mather, said 5 times. In any event the principle is clear.
Repeated exposure will bring a better response.

Conclusion

Using SMS in your company’s marketing mix is essential. I don’t know of anyone who does not use text messaging, including my 73 year old father. Using these 5 top starter tips you should be able to achieve excellent response rates to your SMS Campaigns and because SMS Marketing is so cost effective, it won’t even cost much to give it a go!

Get a Free Bulk SMS account with us and get testing today – once you’ve tried it, you won’t look back!

Reliability of these services varies enormously and they support a range of different functions.

Overseas gateways, where the sms is dispatched from abroad, tend to be far less reliable than sending directly to a UK network.

What sort of problems can be expected using an sms provider that uses an overseas gateway?

- Message delays (which can result in your messages being delivered in the middle of the night!)
- No delivery reports
- Messages not arriving
- Inability to set the sender ID. (who the message is from)

Text Marketer uses a direct connection to Vodafone UK, ensuring that the reliability of our service is outstanding. Our customers have the peace of mind that messages are being delivered quickly and efficiently.